p. 14 | How to Buy Foods

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 6, 1909

How to Buy Foods.

IN a New Jersey town, not many miles from a famous institution of learning, I found one of those groceries whose proprietors have not progressed. You could brush your skirt against a dripping molasses barrel; you could dip your hand into a cracker barrel and help yourself; you could pick out big pickles with your fingers if you wanted them of uniform size, because the clerk did the same thing; but you could not count the fly specks on the cheese-box and coffee grinder, because life is too short for so stupendous a task. And O, the dust!

The proprietor of that store could not sell

me a certain brand of gingersnaps in a moisture-proof box. He said he did not believe in package goods. His customers could not afford such luxuries.

There are thousands of customers like his all over America. They declare that package goods are for millionaires, not wage-earners. But O, if the wives of wage-earners would only study such problems and not jump at conclusions, how much farther the hard-earned wages would go and how much better food would be placed before the man who earns the wages!

I asked the grocer whose customers could not afford to buy package goods how he sold the best grade of rice in his stock. He weighed out a pound of large, plump-grained rice at sixteen cents. I duplicated that pound at another store in a dust-and-germ-proof package at fifteen cents.

He did have both the bulk and package oatmeal. I bought a pound of bulk at five cents, and a two-pound package of a recognized brand at ten cents. On reaching home, I weighed both. The bulk, poured into the scales, weighed an ounce less than a pound. The package weighed exactly two pounds when poured out of the carton. The honest grocer handles package goods that weigh as much as advertised without the carton, understand.— Woman’s Home Companion.